Cooperative negotiation in concurrent engineering design

Design can be modeled as a cooperative multi-agent problem solving task where different agents possess different knowledge and evaluation criteria. These differences may result in inconsistent design decisions and conflicts that have to be resolved during design. The process by which resolution of inconsistencies is achieved in order to arrive at a coherent set of design decisions is negotiation. In this paper, we discuss some of the characteristics of design which make it a very challenging domain for investigating negotiation techniques. We propose a negotiation model that incorporates accessing information in existing designs, communication of design rationale and criticisms of design decisions, as well as design modifications based on constraint relaxation and comparison of utilities. The model captures the dynamic interactions of the cooperating agents during negotiations. We also present representational structures of the expertise of the various agents and a communication protocol that supports multi-agent negotiation.